State gets a D grade for pre-term birth rate
Staff reports | South Carolina received a grade a “D” for its 10.8 percent rate of preterm births last year, according to the new 2015 March of Dimes Premature Birth Report Card.
The organization wants each state to have a preterm birth rate of 8.1 percent or less by 2020, based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
“Our state is not doing as well as we should in preventing premature births and too many of our babies must fight to overcome the health challenges of an early birth,” said Breana Lipscomb, director of Program Services for the March of Dimes South Carolina chapter. “Premature birth is the number one killer of babies and many of our families still face that fear.
“There are large gaps in the preterm birth rate between communities in our state, and racial and ethnic disparities persist.”
Of the state’s large counties, only Greenville with a 9.7 percent preterm birth rate got a grade of a C on the organization’s scale. Spartanburg (10.4%), Charleston (10.8%) and Lexington (11.4%) counties each got a D. But two big counties — Horry (12.1%) and Richland (12.7%) — failed.
Lipscomb told Statehouse Report that the risk for pre-term births was greater in women younger than 17 or older than 35.
“Additionally, appropriate spacing between pregnancies is important. It is recommended that a woman wait 18 months between the end of one pregnancy and the conception of another. This allows time for the woman’s body to heal and prepare for the next pregnancy.”
Prematurely-born babies who survive face “serious and lifelong health problems, including breathing problems, jaundice, vision loss, cerebral palsy and intellectual delays,” the March of Dimes said in a press release.
- To learn more, you can download the Go Purple for Preemies Toolkit at marchofdimes.org/southcarolina.
Freudian slip from the Speaker’s office?
Draw your own conclusions from a headline (below) of a Thursday news release from the office of House Speaker Jay Lucas. In recent weeks, he has gotten really riled up after the state Supreme Court issued a February 2016 deadline for the legislature to come up with a plan to deal with more equitable school funding following a 2014 ruling on a long-simmering court case by poor school districts.
On Thursday, the high court waived the February deadline and gave lawmakers until the end of the 2016 legislative session to come up with a summary of a plan on how it will improve education for children who live in poor and rural areas. The high court didn’t address assertions that justices overstepped their constitutional authority by setting a deadline.
So with this background, what do you think this headline on a news release from Lucas’s office says about the way the way the legislature views the judiciary? Alternatively, it could just be a misspelling:
Lucas Commends Supreme Court Dismal of Abbeville II Deadlines
Judicial overreach stands in way of reform
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!